How to download music from YouTube and transfer it to your Android device

A lot of people who aren’t subscribed to a music streaming service like Google Play Music or Spotify like listening and discovering new tracks on YouTube. In a way this is a great option but it’s far from ideal. For one, the screen of your device has to be turned on all the time for the audio to play, which takes its toll on the battery life. Additionally, it consumes a lot of data, so you have to make sure you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network to avoid a large bill from your carrier.

The best thing to do is simply download music from YouTube onto your PC and then transfer them to an Android device. That way you can eliminate both of the issues I have mentioned above. If you don’t know how to do that, don’t worry. In this post, we’ll show you exactly how, step by step.

Is it legal?

Before we dive into the specifics of how to download music from YouTube, we first have to figure out whether it’s legal or not. The answer to that question is both yes and no. If you contact the copyright holder and get permission to download a song, then you have nothing to worry about. But if you don’t, it technically isn’t legal despite the fact that everyone does it. If it’s an indie artist or something, contacting them might get results, but if it’s a big artist — good luck.

You have to understand that artists who post their music on YouTube actually do make money with it through ads you see at the beginning and sometimes in the middle of videos. If you’re still up for it, you can check out the step by step instructions on how to download music from YouTube below. In the example used, we have downloaded audio from one of our own videos, so our conscience is clear.

Note – there are situations where this process is legal (though still kind of a gray area, due to YouTube’s own service terms), with permission, but often it won’t be. We do not condone piracy, so if you want to download without consent, keep in mind you are doing so at your own risk and we don’t endorse this behavior.

Step by step instructions

Step 1: Download aTube Catcher

So you want to learn how to download music from Youtube? The first thing you need is a piece of software that will allow you to download just the audio from YouTube videos. There are plenty of them to choose from but for this example, we have selected one of the best ones, which is called aTube Catcher.

The download process is quite easy and can be completed in a minute or two. Just visit aTube Catcher’s website, click on the “Download Now!” button located on the right side of the screen, and open the “aTube_Catcher.exe” file once it has been downloaded to your computer.

After that, just follow the simple instructions on your screen and open the program once it’s installed.

Step 2: Find and download songs

The second step is to find the songs you’re interested in on YouTube and download them to your computer, which can be done in two ways. When you launch aTube Catcher, you’ll see a bunch of different options including “Screen capture”, “Video Converter”, and so on. You can see all of them in the image below.

The two options that we are interested in are called “Download Videos” and “Songs”. Both of them are described in detail below.

The “Download Videos” option

If you choose this option, you’ll have to find the tracks you want to download on YouTube. Just visit the website, find a song you like, and copy the URL address you see at the top of your browser window.

Once you have copied the URL, open aTube Catcher again, and paste it into the “URL del Video” box. After that, choose one of the MP3 options from the “Output profile” drop-down menu, and click the “Download” button.

The next thing that will pop-up on your screen is the option of choosing one of the available formats. You basically only have three options which are MP4, WebM, or 3GPPP. Just select one of the MP4 formats and click download. You’ll be able to find all the tracks you have downloaded in the folder specified during the installation of aTube Catcher, which you can always change if you want.

The “Music” option

The second option for downloading tracks from YouTube is called Music. The end result is basically the same, but the process is a bit easier if you ask me. Instead of heading over to YouTube, you can basically look for songs within aTube Catcher. Just click on the “Music” option, enter the name of an artist or a song into the “Hot Search” box, and click the “Search MP3!” button.

A list of videos/songs will show up, and you can listen to the ones you’re interested in by clicking the Play button in the upper left corner. If you like what you hear, just click on “Download Selected” and choose “Save” to download it to your PC. Before you do, you also have the option of renaming the file, choosing the folder in which it will be saved as well as the bitrate.

Step 3: Transfer music to your Android device

So, you have installed aTube Catcher and downloaded a bunch of tracks from your favorite artists to your PC. The next and final step is to transfer them to your Android device so you can listen to them anytime, no matter where you are.

As you can imagine, there is more than one way to do this. You could for example, just upload the songs to a service like Google Drive and then download them to your device via the Drive Android app.

However, the best and fastest way to do it, especially if you have a large music library, is to transfer it with the help of a USB cable. It’s a simple process, as all you have to do is connect your device to a computer using a USB cable, locate the music files on your PC, and then just select and drag them to the “Music” folder on your smartphone or tablet. You can see how this looks like in the image below.

When completed, you’ll be able to access the songs from any music player you have installed on your Android device.

So, there you have it, now you know how to download music from YouTube. As you can see, downloading music from YouTube and then transferring it to your Android device isn’t that complicated of a task. All you need is the proper tools along with a little bit of time and patience. Just remember, this is a gray area at best, so keep that in mind.